


I Know What You Think Of Me

by Opacifica



Series: Gone Fishin' [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Commercial Fishing Industry, Bartender Terezi, Enemies to Friends, F/F, Gen, Humanstuck, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Jaded Fisheries Observer Vriska, Number One Wingman Jake English, Sort Of, Trans Characters, [bangs my fist on the table] They Are Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21516589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opacifica/pseuds/Opacifica
Summary: “Pleasure to work with you, Vriska!” he calls, as you slog through the ankle-deep fish-scum-saturated swill that inevitably accumulates under the processing machinery once the day warms up.“You’re fake as shit, Jake English!” you holler back over your shoulder. “But thanks.”(If you want the rewards of being loved, or, y'know, paid, you have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of gutting five hundred salmon with only a dumbass newbie to help you. Isn't that how that quote goes?)
Relationships: Jake English & Vriska Serket, Terezi Pyrope/Vriska Serket
Series: Gone Fishin' [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1749643
Comments: 23
Kudos: 168





	I Know What You Think Of Me

It’s 0700 and you’re elbow deep in salmon guts when you meet Jake English for the first time. You’ve been at the cannery since your vessel started offloading at midnight, watching the roughly _five hundred_ fucking salmon roll down the sorting line, mixed in with three hundred thousand pounds of pollock like the world’s stupidest ‘spot the difference’ puzzle. 

After two years and five deployments as an observer, you’re no stranger to unimaginably shitty offloads at this port, but the nigh-apocalyptic salmon count is really the cherry on the proverbial cake.

You’re cold. You’re tired. You’re hungry as hell. The raw salmon flesh squelching around your fingers is starting to remind your cramping abdomen of sashimi.

None of this would have happened if the captain had _listened to you_ when you found the first _seven chinook_ in a hundred-kilogram sample. But no one ever listens to you! Stupid Vriska, trying to protect the stupid ocean, prancing around on a stupid boat like a stupid idiot. Fuck you, apparently! Fuck you for giving a shit.

You slice the belly of a particularly massive salmon with probably-unnecessary force, taking a gout of gelatinous scarlet blood to the face for your troubles, and shove your gorey hands back in to dig for gonads. Stupid salmon, while you’re at it. How dumb does a fish have to be to get caught in a pollock trawler’s net when it’s supposed to be halfway up some sparkling mountain stream for spawning season?

Dumbass fish. You’d kill to be halfway up a sparkling-motherfucking-mountain-stream right about now. Your fingers are completely numb, and you’ve finished measuring, weighing, sexing, and collecting genetic samples from… eight salmon.

Roughly four-hundred-and-ninety-two remain.

Fuck.

Your phone rings, a sound that, following your two years deployed in the field, makes you flinch involuntarily. Bitch of a _bitch_ , if it’s your coordinator after your ungodly late timecard entries, you’re hurling yourself into the Bering Sea next chance you get. Is it technically your fault that they aren’t done? Maybe. Does that have any bearing on the ungodly degradation of being reminded of something you have to do midway through an equally shitty task that you _also_ have to do?

No, it doesn’t.

Wrenching your viscera-coated hands out of the fish, you wrestle with your neon-orange bibs and dampen your already-disgusting flannel with cold fish gore, smearing it liberally over your stupid little flip phone in the process of muscling it open.

“It’s Vriska,” you snarl.

“Delightful! This is Jake English, I’m, ah, sort of here to help with your offload, if you could tell me how to, well, get to where you are? I’m afraid I’m not familiar with this factory’s layout, but I’d be jolly well chuffed if you could -”

“Where the fuck is everyone else? Aranea told me there were four other observers in port. Clearly not the fucking A-team if you’re all she can send me. Who even are you?”

You know exactly where everyone else is at seven in the morning. Not on the docks, not picking up _their_ phones when the coordinator rings them in the middle of the night to tell them there’s a goddamn catastrophe of a sampling situation happening at the Skaicorp processing facility.

Probably went out and got hammered or something the previous evening. Or else they’re just ‘tired’ from ‘their own offloads’. Bunch of whiny little bitches.

“Sorry, I’m sure the service here isn’t quite top of the line - Jake English! I’m near the shipping containers by the road, and it’d be a damned shame if I couldn’t find you, since the coffees I picked up from the good ol’ golden arches aren’t getting any hotter.”

“Fine. Fine! Stay put, I’ll find you.”

A newbie, if you don’t know his name off the top of your head. Also a newbie, probably, if he’s willing to show up to help you, since you’ve managed to irritate or terrify basically all of the returners into giving you a wide berth, and even the promise of twenty bucks an hour overtime pay isn’t enough to get them to spend those hours in your vicinity any earlier than necessary.

“You don’t have to bullshit me about coffee, I _hate_ McDonalds coffee,” you start, as soon as you round the corner, trying ineffectually to wipe your hands into a semblance of cleanliness on your already disgusting bibs.

Definitely a newbie.

He’s tall - even taller than you - and the asshole looks like he’s stepped out of a catalogue for protein supplements and rugged outdoorsmanship. Bitch. No one’s allowed to look this good at seven-in-the-fuckdamn-morning.

Then, you notice the coffees. Four of them, steaming in the frosty air.

“No worries. I figure we could probably pawn ‘em off on some of the factory employees, then, they’ll probably appreciate the -”

Fuck. You snatch two coffees from the cupholder, hissing as your stiff fingers close painfully around the cups. You can’t even feel the warmth of them, yet, but you’ll be fucked if you’re going to let him take these opportunities-for-unfrozen-hands away from you.

“Oh. Well. Great!” he says, after a second’s pause. “Okay, so Aranea mentioned you had a bit of a salmon situation on your hands! If you’d be willing to take me down to the site of your labors and point me in the direction of anything I can do to help, I’d be most appreciative. Is Eridan down yet? I could have sworn he and, uh, Meenah, I think, were in town? I think dear Feferi is on a trawler of her own as of this morning, so she probably won’t be joining us, which is a damn shame, isn’t she just a sweetheart?”

You take a long sip of one coffee, just to make sure you’re remembering correctly that it’s fucking disgusting, narrowing your eyes at him. He’ll figure out how this shit works sooner or later, and you might as well break the idiot newbie down from his wet-behind-the-ears enthusiasm before he gets his shit wrecked at his own salmon-heavy offload.

“Look, kid, you’re going to want to take it down like eight notches,” you say, without any really sincere bitterness left, since the coffee is making you feel warm for the first time in _hours_ , and you haven’t slept in about two days. “It’s a shitshow out there. We’ll be at this plant all day. I can’t put up with this shit for another fifteen minutes, let alone long enough to process five hundred salmon! Act like a person. It’ll make things easier.”

He blinks behind a pair of glasses that absolutely no one should be able to pull off. It doesn’t make you feel even a little self conscious about your own dumb bloodstained eyegear. The pause drags on for a little too long, and you take another sip of your coffee, fixing your face in the most don’t-fuck-with-me glare you can muster up.

“Well, alright, I suppose I’ll do my darndest,” he finally says, and at least his doofy grin is replaced with a somewhat contemplative expression.

“Great. You got bibs with you?”

“Afraid not. I’m assigned to the same boat as my last trip, leaving in a few days, most likely, and I left all my gear aboard.”

“Cool. Extremely cool! Cool cool cool cool cool. You’re _really_ the best they could come up with to help me out?”

It’s a little unfair to keep messing with him. Low hanging fruit. But you’ve been pushed around all morning, and for the duration of the time you were deployed on the stupid trawler that caught all the stupid salmon, and it’s _stupid_ , but the frustration that’s been building in your chest is already unfurling and it’s pretty much outside of your control.

And fuck, it’s bugging you that he’s just _taking_ it. If he’d just tap out, bitch back, do anything other than nod agreeably and clutch those goddamn coffees...

“I believe so,” he replies, still unnaturally amicable. “If Eridan and Meenah and… drat, there was another fellow… if they really haven’t made it yet?”

“They’ll stumble in this afternoon,” you say shortly. “Come on. Follow me.”

“Yes, ma’am, do lead the way!”

Once you’ve steered him through the half-outdoors, half-indoors factory, to the overturned blue plastic bin that’s currently serving as your workstation, you hand him your clipboard, a stack of genetic sample envelopes, and a pencil.

“Label as we go, start where I left off. I’ll read off the data as I get it, you repeat it back to me and write it down. Got it?”

“I’ll sure do my best to keep up,” he says, brow furrowed as he inspects the notes on your deck sheet. “‘Fraid I’ve never had to do a pollock offload before. I’ve been on longliners since I started my deployment back in -”

“King salmon, sample 210, weight two-point-eight kilograms,” you interrupts. “Don’t need your life story, actually!”

“Two-point-eight,” he echoes willingly. “Roger dodger!”

“Fifty-eight centimeters,” you add, flipping the fish expertly, pressing the snout up against the end of your length strip, which is already slick and red with guts.

“Fifty-eight centimeters!”

“Aaaaaaaand…” you drag out the syllable as you gut the salmon. No eggs collected along the inside of the spine. “Male.”

He’s already finished labeling three envelopes ahead, which you attribute to his unnatural newbie energy, and he continues to almost eagerly assist you as you scrape off scales and clip fins and chuck the salmon into the ‘done’ bin with the other eight.

The next fish, and the next fish, pass fairly quickly. Your two coffee cups are saturated with fish blood by the time they cool, but you’re not numb and shivering anymore. It’s easier working at the pace you can achieve with two sets of hands, not stopping four times during each salmon to write down the data, with someone holding open envelopes for you to scrape the scales into. He messes up a few envelopes, but you’re too in the zone to really chew him out, and to his credit, he takes criticism pretty well, and once you’re done with the first hundred fifty or so, you’re not having any more problems.

You even decide to overlook the fact that he whistles basically the whole time. It’s hard to hear over the sound of the relentless machinery-whir of the factory, and it doesn’t stop him from repeating back your metric data.

As the morning wears on, the cold and damp starts to seep through your bibs, and even… oh, fuck, whatshisname is looking cold too.

“Hey,” you say, pausing after king salmon sample 461. “You ever been to the break room at this plant?”

“No ma’am, can’t say I have.”

“Quit calling me ma’am,” you snap. “Let’s take a minute to warm up. They usually have donuts and fresh coffee and shit.”

“Oh, nice!” he says, grinning. “Lead the way!”

You have to shuck off your bloody outer layers, but once you do, you stuff them in an unceremonious pile by the small mountain of dead salmon and make a beeline for the stairs up to the Room With Food In It. It’s almost eleven, and your stomach is practically spasming with the consequences of too many skipped meals on your shitty boat.

The newbie trails behind you like a shadow, waving at the plant employees that he gave the extra two coffees to as you trek past. You’re pretty sure everyone who works here is justifiably terrified of your occasional outbursts, though they’re exclusively delivered over the phone, to your supervisors. Aranea can take it.

Clearly not this dude’s style, though.

Exhaustion hits you _hard_ along with the rush of warm air that you set loose as you yank open the break room door. It’s mostly empty, save for a few older women huddled around the coffeepots, and they scatter when you glare at them.

“You’re a woman of strong constitution, to take in a beverage you loathe so dearly in such quantities,” he observes, nodding and smiling politely at the other workers as you fill a little styrofoam cup.

You don’t actually have a response to that, but you point wordlessly at a box of cheap, sugar-soaked donuts in the center of one of the break tables.

“Ooh,” he says, scooping several up in two napkins, offering you a handful, which you take. “What a treat!”

“Enjoy it,” you snort. “This is lunch.”

He frowns.

“That doesn’t seem quite fair. I could head back to Mickey D’s, pick us up some proper grub? I don’t think anyone could impugn us for taking a lunch break.”

“First of all, there’s no fucking universe where a single fucking entree from that McDonalds qualifies as proper _anything_ ,” you say. “Second of all, I’m not hanging out here a minute longer than I have to. Eat while you can.”

“Pardon me, Vriska, but that’s a positively batty approach to this sort of labor. We must keep up our strength.”

“Yeah, that pencil looks real heavy,” you snap.

He leans back on his heels, midway through a donut.

“Is this working for you?” he asks mildly.

“Sure is!”

“Hm. Alright. Well, that’s your prerogative. It’s not really my place to comment, but -”

“That’s the rightest thing you’ve said all day,” you cut in. “It’s not your place. Great talk! Glad we could lay this topic completely to rest, and thanks in advance for never taking that tone with me _ever_ again.”

You stand in silence for a moment and stuff a donut in your face so you don’t have to look at him. When you glance up, though, he’s doing… something dumb with his eyes, so they look all big and sad. For fuck’s sake, he’s got half a head and probably fifty pounds on you, the fucker has no business making that sort of face, like you could ever pity him for a second.

“What?” you demand.

“Have I done something particularly egregious, or is this typically how you treat people who are trying to help you?”

“Oh, fuck off with your… eyes. That’s pathetic. Look, kid, you’re never going to hack it as an observer if you can’t learn to suck it up and take it when someone’s tired of your bullshit! Might as well get that through your skull now.”

“I do appreciate your concern,” he says. “I haven’t had much trouble thus far, but I’ll take it into consideration.”

Something about him just absolutely makes your blood boil, even warm and indoors and satisfyingly full of cheap coffee and cheaper donuts. You finish, wash your hands, and take a self-indulgent moment to wipe the blood from your face with a damp paper towel, which is red and sodden by the time you’re done. He’s back to grinning, and you’re back to fanning a smoldering ember of pure, incomprehensible, but complete and total loathing.

Probably.

You’re really great at knowing how you feel, usually, about everything, but you’re tired as shit, and caffeine is just kind of making the tiredness happen _faster_ rather than easing it even slightly.

“I’d kill for a cigarette,” you grumble, as you step back into the cold, grimacing as you observe that it’s started to mist a fine, chilly rain.

“Oh, easy peasy, hold on now,” he replies, and before you can stop him from making a total fool of himself, he’s trotted over to one of the guys he gave a coffee to earlier and - sweet fuck, he’s got a pair of cigarettes in hand. “Hope you like menthols! That’s all he’s got.”

You do like them, but you accept the two loose cigarettes without comment besides a curt nod.

Then, it’s back to work, once you’ve finished one and tucked the other into the inside pocket of your sweatpants, where it won’t get quite so coated with blood as everything else you own. You resume your pace, measuring and cutting fish methodically, repeating numbers back and forth, filling out page after page of your deck forms, much to your displeasure.

It _is_ more tolerable with company. You'll admit that much. The time passes less like molasses and more like... dish soap. Either way, a step up.

“Ah, lovely!” he observes, interrupting your delivery of the weight of a prodigiously heavy chum salmon. “The cavalry approaches!”

You look up in time to see Eridan and Meenah heading in your direction, neither of them looking especially hung over, for once. Like, you’re no one to talk, but also fuck them both.

“Hey, buoy!” Meenah says, twisting her braids up into a pile on top of her head as she walks.

“Hello there,” the newbie calls back, waving vigorously.

“God, Jake, you look like shit,” Eridan observes. “How long you an’ Vris been out here?”

“Since seven!” he replies, saving you the trouble of spitting out the answer, which would also require you to wring Eridan’s scrawny neck. Instead, you focus on gutting the next few fish, to keep your hands busy. Asshole.

“Your luck, English,” Meenah says. “Let’s fuckin’ finish this, c’mon, I got bigger fish to fry than dead salmon.”

“Of course, I’m sure you do. It really is too bad that you couldn’t make it out earlier! I’m afraid you’ve missed most of the fun, and the coffee,” he says, with a customary smile. “But better late than never, I always say!”

Oh man. Is that on purpose? Is he messing with them? It’s kind of impossible to tell.

Meenah seems to think the same thing, and you know her well enough to actually follow her face journey, but she ultimately shrugs it off and takes your knife, adopting the mantle of fish-sex-determiner, which you can’t say you mind giving up. Eridan picks up the neat pile of labeled envelopes set next to - fine, _Jake_ \- and the process continues, though about twice as fast.

At least there’s not a lot of talking. You almost don’t mind Eridan, even, when he shuts the fuck up for twenty seconds.

The fish level in the bin of chum salmon is shrinking rapidly, but not rapidly enough to get out of the plant before five in the evening, the sun starting to hover lower in the sky and the rain not fully abated. Everyone is drenched, Jake has scammed three more cigarettes for you and you’re jonesing for a fourth, and there are only two coho left to deal with.

“On all of our behalves, fuck salmon,” Eridan says, with an air of finality, leaning into the large blue bin to fish out the last two specimens.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat another salmon, let alone fuck one!” Jake replies, smiling through a face full of gummed-up blood. Meenah isn’t exactly cautious about where the backsplash goes when she’s gutting chums, to no one’s surprise.

“Can I get a hit of whatever you’re on?” Eridan grumbles.

“Joy of a job well done, my friend.”

Unfortunately, it’s too loud out here for him to hear you sigh. You try again, just for the effect, but all you can hear over the machines is… some sort of music? Just barely, and just because you’re listening for it.

Your hand flies immediately to the pocket of your flannel, but it’s not your phone.

“Somebody’s ringing,” you say, taking the last two cohos from Eridan and tossing them unceremoniously onto the gore-saturated makeshift table constructed of an upended bin.

Like the returning observers they are, Eridan and Meenah reach reflexively for their respective pockets, and Jake just sort of frowns at all of you for a split second before hurrying off to the dock strut where he left his coat, cursing under his breath.

“Alright,” you say, since his labeling job is basically superfluous at this point, hefting the penultimate salmon with the hook of your spring scale. “Two point two kilograms.”

Eridan swaps to note-taking duty, immediately smearing the page with salmon scales and blood. You measure and weigh the last coho, then spare a glance for Jake, who is pacing on the dock, looking agitated.

“Blast, I really am sorry, I didn’t get your - yes, I know it’s - no, I’m nowhere near the harbor, I’m _very_ sorry. It’s awfully hard to hear you, I’m really, I must apologize,” he says, loud enough to actually be audible from a distance. “It’s entirely my fault, of course.”

Bullshit.

“Finish with the fish,” you tell Meenah and Eridan - ignoring her as she flips you off - and stalk over.

He’s _upset_. You are absolutely not going to stand for this, if one of the coordinators - probably not Aranea, she lectures but she doesn’t really chew people out - is throwing a shitfit over him _helping you with your fucking salmonpocalypse offload_ , they’ve got another thing coming.

“Give me the phone,” you demand.

He hands it over wordlessly.

“Hi,” you say sweetly, “it’s Vriska.”

Of course, it’s fucking Cal on the other end. Neither of you can stand the other, but if he was going to fire you - which he could, he runs the company - he would have done it already. You’re good at your job, and you keep coming back for deployments, and that’s enough to insulate you from most consequences.

“Serket,” he says flatly, sounding completely unsurprised. “Can you get this dense motherfucker to pull it together.”

“Cal, you realize this shit is why half the newbies drop out,” you snap. “The fuck is going on? You planning to rip this kid a new asshole for doing his job, and frankly, doing me kind of a solid? With like, moderate competence? Lay off him!”

“His assigned ship. Is sailing. Without him on it. As he was warned it would. Five hours ago.”

“Well, tell them to come back! That’s on them! And they have all his shit onboard, too, what the hell? Also, you’re not going to fix anything by yelling at the poor guy. Literally, just have them make a stop at the plant, it’s on their way if they’re leaving the small boat harbor, come _on_. Think for two seconds!”

Jake shoots you a hopeful look, doing the moronic puppy dog eyes thing again. You roll yours, to let him know just how much you think of that.

“Fine. Talking to you has been the worst part of an already shitty day. I hope you’re happy.”

“I better have a room at the motel when this offload is done!” you add, since there’s no reason to let your clear and heroic altruism prevent you from locking down your own accommodations.

“Aranea will call you later. I can’t stand the sound of your voice.”

“Great! Same! Fuck you, too!” you reply, and hang up, pressing the newly-bloodied phone back into Jake’s hands. “Do you get it now? You can’t just let people push you around! I’m not always going to be here to bail you out, kid. Toughen yourself up, or this job’s gonna do it for you.”

“I don’t know, I thought that worked out rather well!” he says, brightening up immediately, wiping the phone clean on his pants.

“Pro tip, when you get a call from Cal, it’s universally because you’re in trouble,” you add. “Give him a different ring tone, make it loud. And keep your phone on your person, for fuck’s sake, it’s not hard!”

“Aye-aye, captain,” he says, saluting, as his phone begins to ring again and he fumbles it open.

A longliner is steaming up to the dock, two crew members on deck, handling the lines. This’ll be his boat. Amazing. He really did almost miss it, the absolute madman.

“You going to be okay?” you ask, frowning at him as he thanks the captain through the phone, swings his jacket over his muscular shoulders, and turns towards the boat.

“Oh, I’m right famished, but I figure they’ll have provisions onboard,” he says cheerfully. Son of a bitch! He’s totally fine!

“Great. Off you go, newbie, there’s a ladder that’ll take you down at the end of the dock, try not to die or whatever. Shitton of paperwork for everyone. Watch out for sea lions.”

You pat him once on the back, leaving a bloody handprint on his shirt, and urge him off in the direction he’s supposed to be going. Newbies! This job! Ugh! At long last, you turn back to the bins where you left your heaps of salmon, not looking forward to the hours of data entry you definitely have ahead of you.

Fucking salmon.

“Pleasure to work with you, Vriska!” he calls, as you slog through the ankle-deep fish-scum-saturated swill that inevitably accumulates under the processing machinery once the day warms up.

“You’re fake as shit, Jake English!” you holler back over your shoulder. “But thanks.”

By the time your data is submitted and you’re back on the trawler - the same fucking one, _fuck you_ , you guess - you’ve more or less forgotten the whole thing.

Until your captain asks you if all observers are this bitchy, after you let him have it over waking you up for haulback _after the trawl doors are already up_ , and you snap ‘yeah, actually, because we all have to work with assholes who treat us like shit so fucking always’. But you think… not everyone, yet.

And you wonder what it’s going to take to actually break Jake’s spirit. Everyone in a job like this has their moment.

You hope, just a little, that it won’t have to be your finger on the trigger, for once. He’s a weird fucking dude, but he might be alright, if you ever have the chance to get to know him.

…

The lady behind the front desk of the Earthsea Lodge squints down at her guest registry.

“Looks like you have a roommate, Ms. Serket!”

You cross your arms irritably. You almost never have a roommate. People are weird about shit, the company hates to step on toes, and you know for a fact that the Earthsea isn’t fully booked. Aranea straight-up told you there were only three other people onshore. Most other observers, even if they’re down with your general deal, can’t stand to share a room with you for reasons like ‘your personality and behavior’, so under these circumstances, you’d usually be looking forward to some fucking privacy, for once.

A storm’s rolling in, and you were really getting pumped for this, damn it. Probably three or four days on land! The Earthsea is barely motel-tier, and the rooms are shitty, but they have actual bathtubs and you don’t like to share them.

“A … _Mr._ Jake English? Huh, is that right?” the lady continues, frowning at the offending line on the registry. “Don’t you worry, I can call your company and get things sorted out if that’s not -”

“Look, I just need a bed that won’t rock me out of it. I don’t give a shit who’s in the next one.”

Not like you, and every other observer, don’t regularly end up crammed in tiny bunks with three crewmates mouthbreathing a few feet away. If you couldn’t suck it up and deal with a little dude-proximity, you absolutely wouldn’t have made it this far, professionally or in general. Not that the company is typically willing to go there, even as a cost-saving measure.

She clucks her tongue.

“You let me know if you have any trouble, young lady.”

Her concern is weirdly affirming, and there aren’t any witnesses, so you don’t fight it. For fuck’s sake, you’re not _young_ , you’re _26_ , which is pretty normal for returning observers, but makes you feel old as shit half the time. But you’re also dead tired. No mental room to consider jack squat other than the mechanics of getting from the bell desk to an area where you can safely pass out. A shower would also do you some serious good.

Key in hand, you make your way up two flights of stairs to room 314, dragging your heavy duffel and overstuffed backpack along with you, thinking dark thoughts about gravity as a concept, and also carpeted stairs. Sighing heavily, you drop your luggage and unlock the door.

Most of the lights are off, and someone is clearly sleeping in one of the two beds. You don’t have any real room to be annoyed with him for taking the double rather than the single - you’d have done the same thing if you got in first - but you are, regardless.

You take a real shower for the first time in two weeks, make a halfhearted attempt to untangle your wind-and-ocean-fucked hair, give up after ten minutes, and fall asleep the second your head hits the pillow.

…

The alarm that wakes you up sounds exactly like yours, but as you paw around sleepily for your phone, you discover that it emphatically isn’t.

“Sorry!” Jake says cheerfully, from the floor, pausing mid push-up, suspended in a deeply uncomfortable-looking plank as he one-handedly reaches over to his own unmade bed to flick the phone screen and silence the air raid siren. At first, you think he’s fully shirtless, which you’re about to have a _problem_ with, but as your vision resolves and you grope your glasses onto your face, you realize that he’s wearing a stretchy dark brown undershirt thingy. Fine. He’s still on thin fucking ice. “S’pose I forgot to turn my alarm off when I woke up, it’s more of a failsafe than anything.”

You groan exaggeratedly. If this bed had more than one thin, inadequate pillow, you would chuck one at him.

“Not to worry, I’ll finish up and leave you in peace,” he adds. “These triceps don’t come cheap, I’m afraid!”

“Better you than me,” you grumble, hiking the covers over your head, tucking your knees back up to your chest, and falling back to sleep almost immediately.

…

He brings you a coffee from McDonalds again, and you don’t bother chewing him out for it. Admittedly, you need the caffeine if you’re going to get out of bed at all today. He beams when you take a reluctant sip, then excuses himself to make a phone call.

By the time he returns from the outdoor stairwell, you’ve had enough time to brush your teeth, wash your face, ignore your increasingly snarled hair, and get dressed at a leisurely pace, in privacy, which is sorely lacking on the boats you’ve been hopping between for the last month. You’re feeling a lot better about the whole situation. The motel has pretty fast wifi, and you’re all settled in to catch up on 90 Day Fiancé and answer some of the approximately eight million texts that have piled up in your inbox when he knocks briefly, pauses, and re-enters the room.

“Ah, you’re up!” he observes.

“Nothing gets past you,” you grumble, nursing your coffee like a lowball glass of whisky.

“Watching anything good?”

“No.”

“Ah. Sorry, I don’t want to -”

“It’s not supposed to be _good_ ,” you say, relenting. “Look, I used to be a pretentious piece of shit about reality tv, but it’s its own kind of art form, alright?”

And the bartender at the motel lounge watches it religiously, or listens to it, rather. If you’re caught up, you’ll have a conversation starter for tonight. You hate this port, because the offloads are hell on earth, but you love this port, because… other reasons. Like the unlimited wifi. Bless the unlimited wifi. After a few months in a tiny port somewhere in the Southeast, paying eight bucks for half a gigabyte, the Earthsea is nirvana.

“You’ll get no argument here,” Jake laughs. “Don’t let me stop you. I’m planning on hiking up to the wind turbines, though, in a bit, if you’d like to come along?”

It’s an insane enough proposition for you to pause the program, midway through a tragically earnest man attempting to ask for his girlfriend’s father’s blessing in entirely incoherent Spanish.

“Let’s get one thing straight. You’re gonna have a bad time if you think I’m the kind of roommate that goes hiking, let alone hiking in the kind of storm that’s got the port closed down, got it?”

“Roger that!” he laughs. “Thought I’d ask, never you mind. I haven’t had a roommate in the field, yet, you’ll have to forgive me for being a bit green at the whole business.”

“Well, welcome to hell,” you say.

“Pleased to be joining you here, ha. My cousin is fairly certain that _at least_ one of us ought to be egregiously offended by this living arrangement,” Jake says, tapping emphatically at his flip phone as though the cousin in question is still on the line or something.

You snort derisively.

“I nominate _you_ for that. Be my guest, make a fuss, see what happens. Stick around long enough and you’ll learn to pick your battles.”

“Yet another skill in which I already feel quite confident! I pick _none of them_ ,” he says, smiling broadly, a disarmingly earnest expression. “So the roommateship continues, then, hiking or not-hiking!”

This man was genetically engineered in a lab to infuriate you.

“Enjoy your show!” he continues, filling a water bottle, swinging a backpack over his shoulders, and heading out with a polite wave.

The poor dude on 90 Day Fiancé spectacularly fails at a proposal by hot air balloon, and you laugh. It’s not as fun to watch it alone, but you consider it research on par with the amount of time you spend memorizing rockfish species. And fine. It’s really not that bad! Just people trying to make stuff work when they’re critically out of their element. You can respect that, if nothing else. You wouldn’t still be doing this job if that wasn’t basically your whole deal.

It’s a Thursday, per your phone. Easy to lose track of time out here. Shouldn’t be too busy at the bar tonight.

Finishing your coffee, curled up in bed, you settle in for the next episode. Rain slashes at the window, wind howls by, the sky outside is uniformly grey. For a few hours, you might as well have your own room after all. It’s perfect! For once in your stupid life, everything’s coming up Vriska.

…

“ _Can_ you even legally drink?” you ask doubtfully, as Jake pops the cap from a Mike’s Hard Lemonade from a six-pack he’s been storing in the mini-fridge.

It’s nearly seven in the evening, and he’s back from whatever the hell he was doing out in the wilderness, soaked to the skin with rainwater, his hair dripping in a way that makes you seriously wary that he’s about to shake like dog fresh out of a mud puddle. So far, he’s content to drip-dry all over the carpet.

“Please, I take great umbrage at your suggestion,” he laughs, after a long drink.

“That’d be a first.”

“I’m twenty-two, thank you very much! Very nearly twenty-three, I’ll have you know.”

“Fresh out of school, huh?” you sigh, accepting an offered lemonade. “Dude, you gotta stop giving me stuff! I’m buying at the bar tonight, and then we’re even.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. What kind of gentleman permits a lady to pay?”

“The kind of gentleman that wants me to _ever speak to him again_ , for starters. It’s 2019. Pull your head out of your ass. Fair is fair.”

He sighs heavily. “Why would we go to a bar, anyway? The hotel lounge looks so terribly depressing this time of the week.”

“Oh, look who’s an expert on the local social scene, now!”

“I’m merely suggesting that we might as well have a night in, rather than face the terrific upcharges to all of their drinks. There’s utterly no point to going out in the middle of the week! Plus, I downloaded some newly released movies, and I’m sure you’d be tempted by a few of the titles.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” you say, frowning over your sickly-sweet lemonade-adjacent beverage. These things are dangerous as shit - you can’t taste the alcohol at all, and you’re halfway done with it before you so much as realize how much you’ve had to drink. “The motel lounge is fucking great. Also, you have shitty taste in alcohol. We’re going to the bar! At least until I make it to the liquor store and get something decent.”

“Suit yourself,” he sighs, a little pouty, but not intolerably so. “I really can’t stand the whole social scene out here, but I s’pose that’s hardly news.”

“Aw, poor newbie. It gets worse. Wait till you’re in one of the remote northern ports. One bar, jack shit else.”

He shudders.

“How long _have_ you been out doing… this?” he asks, after a long moment of contemplation and lemonade consumption.

“Two years,” you say. “Five deployments, counting this one.”

“Christ on a cracker, that’s an awfully long time to do _anything_ , let alone observing!”

You swear he shudders more at this, as though the idea is more repellant than your description of any of the countless cannery towns you’ve ended up stuck in for weeks during impassable blizzards.

“Some people are just cut out for it, I guess,” you tell him, and he frowns and puffs up slightly in response.

“Don’t get me wrong, I like the work!” he argues. “I just… can’t imagine what would bring one to… you know.”

“Same thing that brought me out to Alaska in the first place. Wanted to get away. This is about as far _out_ as you can get without having to learn a new language or some shit,” you say. Then, you mentally reprimand yourself. No excuse for getting weird and mopey, you’re not even drunk!

“Huh.”

“Don’t ‘huh’ me. Why’d you take the job, then, if you’re so special?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘special’,” he complains, hitting you with full-force puppy dog eyes that have about as much effect on your ebbing contempt as a squirt of kerosene on a grill. God, just when he was seeming tolerable. “I love an adventure! Alaska is the final frontier for that sort of thing, the last place in the country where a man could disappear off into the wilderness and truly never be found! Rest assured, I’ve thought it all out quite thoroughly, Miss Vriska.”

“You want to… starve to death in the woods?” you snort. “That’s your _big_ , super-well-considered reason? Fun.”

His cheeks color.

“That isn’t at all what I meant. I just - a fellow needs a touch of risk in his life, or he isn’t really living!”

“The third-person of that statement reeeeeeeeally sells it.”

“Oh, stop it!” he says shortly, crossing his arms around his near-empty drink, swishing the dregs around, tipping it back, and setting it down beside his last bottle. “I’m here because I _want_ to be here, and I’m great at it, and I _love_ risking life and limb and getting yelled at all the time, damn it!”

“When you put it that way, I’m surprised anyone _isn’t_ an observer,” you laugh.

“Ugh, must you be like this so _friggin’_ always?”

“For eight thousand dollars a month, I’ll stop,” you say gravely.

He laughs, looking up from his task, opening a third bottle - okay, he could probably stand to slow down - a bit incredulously. Meme-literate. Fuck this guy, honestly.

“Pour me half of that,” you tell him, setting aside your half-finished drink and reaching over to the coffee machine for one of the paper cups left by room service.

“Fine,” he says, tipping the bottle obligingly, stopping short of half.

Look, you can’t have him making an idiot of himself in the bar with you! If he’s trashed, it’ll make you look stupid by association, and you don’t actually need any help with that.

You raise your still-unfinished bottle in a ‘cheers’, clinking it against his bottle as he frowns in your general direction and doesn’t meet your eyes.

“I need some space,” he finally says.

Okay. You prepare to scoot back, easy enough to do on the carpeted floor where you’re hosting the world’s most pitiful pregame.

“For heaven’s sake, not from you!” he chuckles. “Just from. I don’t know. From my own fucking self! Four years was far too long to spend in one place, on such a small campus. This seemed like the opposite of everything I’d been doing! Lab work, dicking around in a big city, getting all embroiled in this and that and the other. And they called me the day after I applied, and I just said ‘yes’, and then I… left. I didn’t even say goodbye to hardly anyone. Just left.”

“Aw, look, you _can_ tell the truth.”

He glares up at you, without any real passion to it.

“S’pose I can.”

“Hey, I don’t give a shit. Good on you, though. Being honest with yourself is the first step to not being an irredeemably pathetic piece of shit!”

“No chance of that,” he sighs, slumping back against the foot of his bed. “But I’ve quite come to terms with it, not to worry!”

“There is a dead-zero chance of me literally _ever_ worrying about you,” you say comfortingly.

“I know,” he says, and smiles slightly. No teeth, less stomach-turningly overenthusiastic than usual. Hm. “Believe it or not, I appreciate that. Now, why don’t you fill me in on the components of the social scene about which I’m so sorely misinformed? Truly, why the blistering _fuck_ are we going to a motel bar on a Thursday night?”

Apparently for a second too long, you hesitate.

“I don’t mean to push you,” he says, and his grin turns broad. “But of course, being honest with yourself is the first step to not being a - oh, what was that phrase?”

You finish the rest of your drink in one exasperated gulp.

…

It’s by no means a remarkable bar. There’s a battered pool table where you’ve managed to shark your way to plenty of free drinks, a dartboard, and fuckall else but the actual bar itself and a few booths tucked away in the corner. Every surface is just, like, a little sticky. You absolutely love it.

Jake trails you in, changed into dry clothes and still moderately put-out about leaving the room. You had to essentially cajole him into it with the promise of a game of darts and by reluctantly tabling your insistance on paying for his drinks, which noticeably sapped the tension from his shoulders. Fucker absolutely will not let anyone do him a favor, which would suit you just fine, if you weren’t like three favors behind in this protracted war of attrition called friendship.

The live band that plays most evenings has already tapped out for the night, leaving the music furnished by a single portable speaker resting on the bar playing extremely shitty indie music. Perfect.

Predictably, the room is nearly empty, save for a few grey-bearded guys in hunting camouflage sharing a couple of pints in a booth. You restrain yourself from leaping onto a bar stool, because you’re cool, and you don’t want Jake to be smug about having caught you in a mild omission-of-truth.

“Mm. Seafoam,” the bartender says, leaving the kitchen with a basket of wings for the guys in the corner. “That can’t be anyone but Vriska Serket, returned from the icy gulf.” She licks her lips, wetting them just slightly. There’s no way she’s even aware of how that looks, since, y’know, _blind_ , and you avert your gaze before you look like a creepy piece of shit, y’know, to someone. “And you brought a lime zesty friend!”

“Jake English, at your service, miss!” he interjects, sparing you the trouble of avoiding his gaze as he leans across the bar to shake her hand and she laughs with delight. “I’m so terribly excited to meet a chum of Vriska’s. Might I order a blue lagoon? Extra blue?”

“A discerning palate! I like him. I’m Terezi. What can I get you?”

You clear your throat. “Same.”

“So, what’s the story?” Jake says eagerly. “How’d the two of you meet?”

If you tap out now you’ll look like a huge loser. He smiles innocently at you as Terezi flips down a bottle of blue Curaçao and a cheap handle of vodka, dead bottom shelf.

“Ha! Would you believe Reddit?” she laughs, answering before you can. “She had a lot to say about the combination Taco Bell-KFC on r/Alaska two summers ago. I was forced to defend the honor of my township against the incursion of this sea-salt-scented scoundrel from the _lower forty-eight_.”

“Way to talk me up!” you complain. “I was making _points_. Keeping it spicy! Mods love me. Who the fuck was on r/Alaska before I made it fun? That thread hit the front page. I had so much fucking karma before you got me banned.”

Coincidentally, the thread she followed up with denouncing you, citing over twenty of your posts from the last three years as evidence of poor character, moral turpitude, and complete lack of taste, also made it to the front page, via r/subredditdrama. She made fun of you for having opinions about Rick and Morty, among other things.

In fairness, with the benefit of perspective, you can appreciate that she was at least sort of right.

“She’s never made a point in her life,” Terezi says, grinning, almost sharklike. “Luckily for her, I took pity on her when I found out she’d been marooned here for two weeks in the summer slowdown and accepted her land-induced insanity plea.The rest is history!”

Luckily for _your face_ , which is on the precipice of something that might appear blush-adjacent to the untrained observer, Jake’s eyes are already saucers at the prospect of shitty fast food, and he’s grilling Terezi about life on the island port and whether she’s encountered bears, how many, and what she did about it, and how come she lives out here, anyway, and has she ever been to Sand Point? He was just in Sand Point, do people island-hop much? Does she? 

She serves you the anime-water drinks. Two orange slices in yours, only one in his. He doesn’t notice. You obviously do. You notice everything she does, even when you wish you didn’t.

Even though you’ve heard all of this stuff about eight dozen times, you listen for anything new, or anything you might have missed. She moved out here from a smaller island in the Southeast after she graduated from high school, right around when her mom died. Which was also right around when your mom died, though your opinions on the topic of ‘dead moms’ happen to be pretty different. She put off college for a while, and actually just got back into it about a year ago, taking classes at the local satellite campus of the University of Alaska system. Her stack of recorded textbooks sits behind the bar, next to the fruit slices.

And of course she’s never _seen_ a bear, asshole. They do have a smell, though. She spent a while in Sand Point on a layover once, and it sucked. He agrees emphatically. It takes another empty neon blue beverage for her to get through all of that, plus the abridged life story, though, because Jake asks a _lot_ of questions as she goes.

It’s funny, watching them interact while more than a little buzzed yourself. You’ve seen Terezi chat people up from behind the bar before. The second she senses that someone is even moderately interested in her - which, obviously, she’s brilliant and hilarious and actively bringing drunk assholes more alcohol, it happens a lot - she flips a switch, like, twenty-five percent less mean, twenty-five percent more sugar-sweet, one-hundred-percent fake laugh. It’s got to be a service industry thing. You’d have gotten fired from this job the first time someone tried to explain why non-pelagic trawling is actually environmentally sustainable, but Terezi consistently kills it, somehow making even hostile barbs and outright rejections sound… quirky, and adorable, like she couldn’t possibly _mean_ it, part of her charm!

You’d kill yourself if she ever felt like she had to act like that with you, if you ever heard her laugh like that at something you said, so you’re careful. Really careful. It’s her workplace, obviously, but you hardly ever get to see her anywhere else!

Pro or not, she doesn’t seem completely sure what to make of Jake, and you can almost sense it, how she’s testing him with various softball pushes and pulls to try to figure out his deal. He agreeably catches them and throws them back, all with increasingly inebriated enthusiasm. Same bullshit he pulled with you, buoyant and unflappable and all smiles, even when he unexpectedly twists a knife you never saw him stab you with to begin with.

“I’ll probably only stay at the local campus for a few more months,” she’s telling him, and you frown. “There’s no pre-law track, here.”

“Ah, I see! Further inland, then? Maybe somewhere in the dreaded continental United States, show those blasted mainlanders what they’re missing?”

“Ha! As if. I’m thinking Anchorage. With the rate I’ve been racking up credits out here, I could be done with law school and undergrad in the next three years.”

“Where do you plan to go then? I don’t suppose the sea lions are hiring defense attorneys.”

“We have a courthouse, smartass!”

“And from it, you shall rule with an iron fist, no doubt.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t be so flippant with the girl pouring your drinks,” she says, laughing. “Maybe you’re on the right track, cilantro-boy.”

“Augh, any green-smelling analogy but that one, I’m one of those hapless people for whom it tastes of soap!”

“Honestly, Vriska, where the hell do you find these people?” she sighs, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead to indicate how totally beset-upon she is.

“Don’t look at me,” you retort, nibbling at your orange slice, section by section, possibly more inebriated than you realized. “He’s the one who keeps following me around.”

“Can you blame me?” he laughs, at the same time Terezi laughs ‘well, no accounting for taste!’, then shoulders you with a friendly gesture that nearly knocks you off your stool. You retaliate with a swift elbow to the ribs, and he coughs for a few seconds, his eyes watering behind his glasses. Terezi’s laughter ebbs slightly as she leans over to replace his emptied drink.

“Maybe his last,” you cut in, pushing your own glass forward for another blue beverage. “Make mine a double.”

“Pish posh, you’re not my mom, and you _are_ a damnable hypocrite. I want a double as well!”

“Listen to your Vriska,” Terezi snorts. “For once, she’s right about something! I have to encourage that behavior when I can. And you better not yak on my bar.”

“Or what,” he argues, “you’ll sue me in three to four years?”

You pause, for a second, as that sinks in, somehow lock eyes with Terezi, even through her little red glasses, and fully _chortle_.

“Holy shit! He fucking got you!”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Vriska. In three to four years, your ass is mine,” she retorts.

“Promise?” you shoot back, then flush from your head to your goddamned toes. “Better study fast, Pyrope, those statutes of limitations wait for no one!”

“As if the felonious fetor that follows you from port to port could be washed away by something as fake as time!” She snorts. “I would know, I think I’ve been involved in half of it. The prosecution calls herself to the stand!”

“Can’t wait for you to go to actual lawyer school and get your dreams crushed when that’s not how it works,” you argue.

“Hmmm, plea bargain: hop off my dick and I’ll reduce your sentence to time served on horrible fishing boats.”

“Great, I’ve got so much of that, I can commit way more awesome crimes and be totally in the clear!”

“You’re a menace to society,” she sighs, and slides you another drink.

“One of my better qualities!” you parry, realizing right about when you say it that you are, yeah, a little drunk. Just a little! Just enough to actually talk to her, the sweet spot where you can be normal and maaaaaaaaybe a little flirty without wanting to hurl yourself off the nearest dock.

Great time to slam back another drink, obviously!

And also, uh, to realize that Jake has disappeared. Terezi seems to have the same thought that you do, frowning and inhaling a little more vigorously than usual. He’s off talking to the booth full of grizzled old fisherman-looking guys, which seems like a recipe for disaster, probably. Well, that’s not a situation where you’re going to be remotely helpful, so you make the executive decision to ignore it.

You turn back to Terezi.

“How’s class been going?”

“Eh, finally finishing my literature requirement, it’s a shitton of reading, which is kind of awful, but once I knock this one out, it’s easy street.”

“Sounds rough,” you say, nodding along. “They’re taking care of you though, right? You’re not getting left in the lurch by your stupid school?”

“They respond well to legal threats,” she laughs, shuffling her text reader out from under the counter with a flourish.

“Aw, so your lawyer-ese actually has a use! Didn’t figure I’d ever say _that_.”

“You’re losing your edge, Serket! Better ease up on the compliments, backhanded or otherwise, or I might start thinking you’re not the most obnoxious bitch alive.”

“Take that back! Fuck, I do need to step it up. It’s hard, my stupid nicey-nice roommate is rubbing off on me.”

“Yeah, what’s his deal, anyway?”

“I’m gonna be real with you: I have no fucking clue.”

As if on cue, one of the guys from the corner table calls ‘can we get another round, plus one?’ followed by a bout of uproarious laughter from all present. Terezi frowns, but willingly begins to fill a fresh set of glasses from a tap of some domestic swill. You absolutely do not drink beer. Beer is disgusting. Like carbonated piss! Like if Bear Gryllis came up with a drink inspired by his wilderness survival strategies. You’re pretty sure you’ve shared that particular riff with Terezi on a previous occasion, so you keep it to yourself and finish your drink as she carts the beers over to the table, still feeling weirdly self-conscious about the whole thing.

“So,” you say, when she comes back, remembering your diligent research from earlier with a rush of relief. “You caught up with 90 Day Fiancé?”

“Don’t get me started!”

“Too late, I’m starting you! Jenny and Sumit, what the actual fuck?”

She laughs with sincere delight - your ears have definitely gone red, you can feel your pulse in them, you could really use another drink but you don’t want to interrupt her! - and launches into a shockingly in-depth explanation of Hindu marriage law. Holy fuck, she’s so smart. You nod along when it seems appropriate and process at best about eighty percent of what she’s saying, and force yourself to say something clever in response when she pauses expectantly.

Periodically, the corner table orders shots of Jameson. You get another syrupy blue drink. They’re really growing on you! Admittedly, it’s a lot more fun than your bourbon go-to.

“Vriska!” Jake interrupts, midway through your treatise on the Clearly Doomed nature of Corey and Evelin’s relationship, post-hot-air-balloon fiasco. “I need a partner!”

“You have hands!” you call across the bar, and snort at your own joke.

“Rude! For pool, come on! A hundred greenbacks on the line, don’t chicken out on me!”

You’re drunk, but he’s _drunk_ -drunk, supporting most of his weight on the corner of the table, the rest on a pool cue. This is a terrible idea. You’re so fucking in.

“Sorry, ‘rezi, gotta defend my honor!” you say, grinning.

“I know you do,” she laughs, taking your empty glass and turning on her reader as you hop off the stool, nearly stumble, and quickly right yourself.

“Let’s fucking do this,” you say. “Who’re your friends, dude?”

“Captain… er, well, this fellow here, and this other fellow, from the… ship, haha, they’ve got a ship!”

“How plastered are you?”

“Don’t worry that little head of yours, I’m as hand-eye coordinated as I’ve ever been,” he insists, gesturing grandly at the two older men in the process of putting down a stack of twenties on the corner of the table, probably eagerly anticipating an easy win.

Well, not today! You’re fucking great at pool, and you can carry the two of you if you have to - and it looks like you’ll have to. You introduce yourself, and everyone shakes hands, the guys (generic dude names, totally unremarkable) acting like you’re an old friend. You frown internally and decide to attribute the weirdness of it to the contagiousness of Jake’s insanely exuberant energy, which is intensified by an order of magnitude, apparently, when he’s fucking wasted.

And then one of the guys breaks and ends up with stripes, leaving you and Jake with solids. You sink a respectable two balls, trade play, and then hand the cue to him.

He fucking cleans up the table. Just the eight ball, the seven, and the two left.

The guys aren’t even mad! They seem to find him completely delightful, for some completely mysterious reason. You keep your trash talk to a minimum and just _watch_ , and when your turn comes up, you get the seven in and leave him the rest. Generous of you!

Immediately after winning the game, sinking the shit out of the eight ball in a hell of a shot, he comes dangerously close to breaking his nose when he trips over his own cue, and you wind up half-carrying him, which is sort of what you expected to end up happening.

“I’m doing fine!” he insists, as you try to haul him back to the bar, a hundred bucks and several claps on the back richer, some-fucking-how. “Splendid! Absolutely fucking dandy!”

“I think we need to close out,” you tell Terezi, offering her the hundred. “Keep the change, it’s our ill-gotten gains and I get a rush out of paying you with dirty money.”

“Gambling!” she declares, with exaggerated horror. “A capital offense! And bribery on top of that.”

“See you at the guillotine, babe,” you half-say, half-slur, and shoulder Jake repeatedly until he at least tries to stand up straight.

“It’s a date!” Terezi calls after you, with a laugh that can really only be described as a cackle.

You sigh wistfully and resume shepherding your idiot roommate towards the stairs. At least you don’t have a real walk home from the hotel lobby. That would be a fucking Sisyphean task, and the stairs alone are intimidating enough so far as prospects go.

“Uh, Vriska,” he says, after you elbow him up the first flight, half-pushing, half-carrying him, “I think I might be a little bit soused.”

“You _think_? That’d be a new one!”

“You’re so dreadfully callous! For no reason at all!” he complains.

“Au contraire, my good bitch. I always have a reason,” you huff, rounding the corner of the second flight. “C’mon. One more. Move your legs.”

“I’m _tired_ ,” he whines.

“Yeah, that’s what happens when you go hiking all day like a dumbass instead of napping, like a person with a brain in their head! And also drink yourself stupid!”

“Hey!”

“Tell me I’m wrong,” you snap, more exasperated than upset as you practically hoist him over the last step. Almost there, thank fucking _fuck_.

He grumbles something inaudible but doesn’t object. Good. You leave him leaning against the wall to unlock the door to your room and usher him in after you. Having a roommate is such a goddamned drag!

“Soooooooo,” he says, once you’ve got the door closed, grinning broadly. “You like her.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” you parry irritably, throwing yourself down on your unmade bed.

“You like-like her!”

“You’re out of your fucking mind. Do us all a favor and pass the fuck out.”

“Mm, interesting idea. Hold on jus’ a second.”

He pauses, shakes his head, and disappears into your shared bathroom. You’re almost totally certain that he throws up a few times, followed by the shuffling-around sounds of cleaning up and the sink running. Your head is spinning too much to think about anything else.

“There, fresh as a daisy, second wind ahoy!” he declares, rolling onto his own bed, seemingly far more conscious.

“Wow, dude, what the hell is your damage?”

“Must we really get into that, now? I thought it an ideal time to discuss Ms. Terezi and -”

“Nope!” you interrupt. “Nope, nope, nope! Never! Fuck off! You do _not_ get to pull that shit and then act like _I’m_ the one who needs some kind of … fucking… peer intervention, okay? What’s your problem? C’mon, spill, I know you want to.”

“What problem? I like to get along with people! I like to have a good time, every so often! Is it really necessary to make a federal fucking issue of it?”

“Uh, yeah, actually! That’s how friendship or whatever, like, that’s how it works,” you insist.

“Are we friends?” he asks, somewhat incredulously.

“Sure, yeah, observer shit is basically friendship on speedrun, might as well label it!” you say, crossing your arms and trying to focus on a single point on the hideously ugly popcorn-texture ceiling to keep your head from spinning. Ugh!

“Well, I don’t do a lot of that business,” he says, a little stiffly.

“Bullshit,” you argue. “You befriend everyone that comes within eight fucking feet of you, bro.”

“Do I?” he asks, and you force yourself to roll over to frown at the rhetorical question, only to find that he’s also rolled over and is frowning right back at you. “I really don’t think that’s what it is. At all, honestly.”

“Then how the fuck do you explain… those guys? And why basically everyone likes you - except Cal, I mean, but he’s a dick to literally everyone?”

“I…” he trails off, and frowns. “Well, I wouldn’t say…”

“You’re so full of it,” you laugh. “Why the hell do you try so hard? Like, what the actual fuck are you getting out of any of this? I know it’s not about free drinks, because you won’t let me buy you shit! So what’s the fucking _deal_ , dude?”

“I could ask you the same question,” he says shortly. “As a matter of fact, I think I did, didn’t I? What on earth do you _get_ out of treating the people around you so rudely? Do you _collect_ enemies? It’s truly the most irrational approach to human interaction I’ve ever seen! You are positively maddening! I don’t understand why you insist on making everything so damned difficult, when things can be so easy if one isn’t a bloody _asshole_ all the time! I mean, really, I know that you’re capable of reading a room, since you seem to pick up on whatever _vibes_ would be most appropriate and do precisely the opposite!”

“Damn, English, tell me how you really feel!” you snap.

“That’s exactly how I really feel! I just don’t get it, how you… do that, and don’t seem to care! Don’t you care what everyone thinks of you? I mean, don’t you understand how much more difficult you’re making everything for yourself?”

“Fuck you! I’m making shit way more simple, actually! I figured you’d get it, Mr. ‘I need space’. If you give people a fucking inch, they’ll take everything you have. Don’t you get that? How the fuck have you made it twenty-two years or whatever, looking like _that_ , and you haven’t figured that shit out?”

“I think,” he says, his voice low and his tone inscrutable, “you’re going about it the wrong way.”

You scoff.

“Oh, buddy, you and everyone else on the fucking planet. If I gave a shit, how long do you think I’d last? How much do you think I’d have to fucking grovel to make up for my sheer fucking existence, just to get out of the red with most of the assholes in this stupid fucking _society_? Like, did you forget, _we live in a society_?”

“I have never, for one goddamned second, forgotten that! And it _is_ incredibly hard work, and it is constant and unrelenting, but it… it’s worth it, to be a little safer from it all. You may have noticed that I’m a bit of a bonehead, Vriska, there’s a lot I can’t do by myself! I can’t afford to go about making adversaries of everyone I meet. I’m not actually fucking charming enough to pull that shit off, you understand? If you strip away the… the artifice, I guess, not to put too fine a point on it, there’s nothing in here worth liking or helping or fucking _anything_! I barely feel competent in this goddamn job, I hardly know what I’m doing, and the second I drop the… the… you know, I have nothing at all! I’m a tremendous coward, a real fucking imbecile on most counts, awfully capricious and more than a bit of an asshole, and I can hardly hold onto a friend, let alone a static geographic location, without… I don’t know! Going stir crazy and mucking it all up! So maybe you’re right. Perhaps that is my damage. I don’t see any way to go about fixing it. May as well lean into the business. Are you happy?”

“You think I’m charming?” you say, picking out the most important part of that monologue with laser-guided precision.

He laughs, full body, achingly sincere.

“Of course, Vriska. You know, it wouldn’t hurt half so much, how utterly unsparing of one’s feelings you can sometimes be, if you weren’t so very clever, and capable, and… confident in yourself, and interesting.”

“Oh.”

“There. Now it’s all out in the open, I suppose. There’s more than one way to keep people at arm’s length! We all have our methods, don’t we? Our ‘damage’, if you will. No, people won’t take _everything_ if you willingly hand over a yard rather than an inch first and make them feel appropriately bad about having taken so much from you already! And then you at least get to choose what you give! Alright?”

“That’s… pretty fucked up,” you say slowly.

“Don’t I know it.”

“But I mean. If it works, it works.”

“You don’t need to enable me. I really do enough of that on my own behalf,” he sighs.

You lay there in silence for a while, considering the ceiling and the dim overhead light, which doesn’t work in some of the Earthsea’s rooms, and barely functions in this one.

“That got heavy,” you finally say.

“You started it,” he grumbles, a bit petulantly, and you laugh.

“Let’s sleep it off, I guess, unless you’ve got anything else to… uh, spill?”

“That’s… quite enough of that, I think.”

“Thank fuck.”

Without thinking too much about anything - thanks, alcohol - you stumble out of bed, turn off the light, and hurl yourself back in the general direction of your pillow. In the ensuing silence, you can hear the storm raging outside with far greater clarity, the wind whipping through any crack and seam in the window. It’s a hollow noise, the intensity of it vibrating through the foundations of the shitty motel.

Jake falls asleep first, his breathing evening out, and you focus on that less-disturbing sound, the insularity and comfort of sharing this harbor with another human. That part of it, at least, is tolerable. It was, after all, a pretty good night. All things considered.

…

You wake up to a text from Terezi and an empty bed across from you.

TEREZI: D1D YOU BOTH SURV1V3 TH3 LONG JOURN3Y HOM3?

Well, you don’t want to worry her. Your head pounds as you tap away at the little keys on your shitty work phone.

VRISKA: 8arely!

She replies almost immediately.

TEREZI: 1F YOU’R3 NOT 4SS1GN3D TO 4 N3W V3SS3L Y3T, DO YOU W4NT TO G3T BR34KF4ST?  
VRISKA: It’s like, afternoon, come on.  
TEREZI: F1RST M3AL OF TH3 D4Y 1S BR34KF4ST  
TEREZI: 1T 1S TH3 OLD L4W  
TEREZI: PLUS SOM3 R1D1CULOUS WOM4N 4T TH3 B4R L4ST N1GHT T1PP3D L1K3 200% FOR SOM3 UN34RTHLY R34SON  
TEREZI: H3LP M3 SP3ND H3R... 1LL-GOTT3N G41NS >:]  
VRISKA: She sounds like a real 8itch! Fine, If you insist, I guess.  
TEREZI: 1 DO 1ND33D  
VRISKA: Har8or cafe?  
TEREZI: TH3R3 1S ONLY ON3 L3G1T1M4T3 R3ST4UR4NT ON TH1S ROCK OP3N B3FOR3 F1V3  
TEREZI: SO OBV1OUSLY  
VRISKA: No need to 8e cr8nky a8out it! I said ‘fine’.  
TEREZI: S33 YOU 4T THR33  
TEREZI: 1’LL BR1NG G4TOR4D3 FOR YOUR HUNGOV3R 4SS  
VRISKA: Fuck, Pyrope, you’re a s8nt.  
TEREZI: 1 KNOW  
TEREZI: 1T’S B33N S41D >:P

You sigh and fall back on your single pillow. It’s a little before two, and you’re perversely too headachey to go back to sleep. Ugh! You dig around in your backpack for headache meds, tossing back an ibuprofen and forcing yourself to get up and drink some water straight from the sink, like the fucking animal you currently feel like.

Jake returns to the room at some point. This time, you notice, with what could almost be pride, that he’s only brought one coffee. For himself.

“Hey, dipshit,” you say. “I’ve got a date. You gonna be able to handle yourself without me for the afternoon?”

“I can handle a few hours alone, but after that, no promises that the place’ll be standing when you get back!”

“Noted,” you laugh. “Good morning?”

“Hungover as hell, barely remember a thing.”

“Good, you’re a talky drunk.”

He groans exaggeratedly.

“Thank fuck for the memory loss, then! I hope I didn’t say anything too foolish?”

“Nothing worth repeating, no worries.”

This visibly relaxes him, and he falls back into his bed with an air of relief. You wonder how much of his blackout amnesia story is bullshit. He certainly seems completely fine, relative to the utter disaster of clearly-got-hammered-last-night that is your face. Oh, to be twenty-two and to have an inhuman metabolism for bad decisions!

“Well, good to hear,” he sighs, mostly into his pillow. “I might order in dinner around eight, if you’re planning on being back by then? I thought I might try out your shitty reality television tactic, see how well that works out for me.”

“Start with 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way. That’s the hot topic of the day, if you want to fit in with the cool kids.”

“Gracious, do I _ever_ want that! So, finally got it together to ask Miss Terezi out in earnest, did you?”

“I’ll have you know,” you say, face heating up _just slightly_ , “ _she_ asked _me_.”

He laughs in undisguised glee, rolling over to grin at you.

“I’m a hell of a wingman, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, you made me look great in comparison!” you snort. “We’ll see. I mean, it might not be a date. I left kind of an insane tip, even though I had, like, a reason. She probably just doesn’t want to feel like she owes me anything, and like, I totally get that. I’m going to play it cool.”

“May I, perhaps, make one small recommendation?” he says.

“Recommend cautiously, I’ve got an itchy face-hitting fist,” you say, scowling at him.

“You might consider brushing your hair,” he replies, his smile growing by about a watt. “You know, for your probably-not-a-date.”

“Fuck you!”

“With utmost respect, my friend, I don't even know where to start with that one! I’d be happy to _help_ you, though. I used to wear my hair a great deal longer, and have some expertise on the business!”

You eye him suspiciously.

“Just an offer,” he adds. “I’ve also got some products, if you like, and not much use for them since I sheared it all off.”

After five minutes grimacing at yourself in the bathroom mirror, you take him up on the offer, warning him in no uncertain terms that he’d better not act like this makes you any more than friends-of-necessity, a term to which he accedes far too easily. You settle onto the floor, and he sits on the edge of his bed, leaning over and scrutinizing the mess.

“I kind of miss this,” he says, starting from the snarled ends of your wind-fucked hair with the paddle brush you keep in your backpack. “Might I do a braid, as well? I used to do a really splendid crown braid for special occasions, and this certainly qualifies. It would look quite nice in curls like yours!”

“Maybe next time,” you mutter, trying not to be weird about how nice it is to have someone playing with your hair, even if it’s not quite pleasant yet, with how completely snarled it’s gotten, even with your vague efforts at maintenance from boat to boat. It’s a small reassurance that literally every long-haired observer seems to have the same problem. “I don’t want to seem like I’m trying too hard!”

“Ah, I see. That’s sort of the only way I know how to be, I’m afraid, but I’ll do my best!”

“Thanks,” you say, and he hums cheerfully in agreement.

You turn the television on and flip stations until you agree on an Animal Planet show about extreme river fishing, which takes place in an Alaskan port you’ve both visited. You take turns relentlessly mocking the host as he tries to make _salmon sharks_ seem scary. It’s nice, actually. Not just okay. Kind of nice.

…

It turns out to be all for nothing. Well, at least in terms of not trying too hard.

Your hair is the first thing she notices, somehow.

(She says it smells beautiful.)


End file.
